In the last several weeks, a host of makers of Android devices have agreed to pay Microsoft fees for alleging using Microsoft patents when deploying Android on their devices. Why is that happening? It appears that Microsoft may have found a way to legally game the patent system.

Lee notes that Microsoft has been stockpiling patents for many years, and that it currently has about 18,000 patents in its portfolio. Google, by way of contrast, has been granted only 700. This isn't because Microsoft is more innovative than Google, he argues. It's because Microsoft has instilled the idea of trying to grab any patent it can, no matter how far-fetched, into its culture. Google hasn't done the same.

What does this have to do with Android device makers agreeing to pay for Microsoft patents? Plenty. Lee says that Android has approximately 10 million lines of code in it, and then says:

Auditing 10 million lines of code for compliance with 18,000 patents is an impossible taskespecially because the meaning of a patent's claims are often not clear until after they have been litigated. Most Silicon Valley companies don't even try to avoid infringing patents. They just ignore them and hope they'll be able to afford good lawyers when the inevitable lawsuits arrive.

Microsoft has a substantial budget for its legal staff, and can easily afford to sue as many manufacturers as it wants. Those manufacturers, though, typically don't have big legal warchests. They simply find it easier and less expensive to pay Microsoft for the patents, even if they don't believe they are infringing.